When she reached for Eve’s mug, Eve grabbed her wrist. “There’ll be another murder if you touch my coffee.”
“I’ll go get my own.” But she walked to the board first, and found Sandy’s photo. “One in the heart. No muss, no fuss.”
Eve frowned as Nadine strolled to the kitchen. The hell of it was, they were the smart girls.
“Okay, all right. Reo, shut the damn door before somebody else wanders in here.” Then she blew out a breath when Louise did just that.
“I couldn’t sleep so . . . oh, French toast!”
“She’s a smart girl,” Nadine pointed out, and went over to shut the door herself. “Mavis, Louise wants French toast. We’re helping Dallas on a case.”
Eve resisted—barely—the urge to beat her head against the desk. “Everybody just sit down and shut up. Nadine, I don’t want anything in here on-air, unless I clear it. And I don’t want to see any of it in a damn book.”
“I won’t air anything without your go-ahead. As to the book? Hmmm, interesting.”
“I mean it. Louise, you take your medi-van down to Pearl, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Have you ever treated a couple of scavengers called Kip and Bop.”
“As I matter of fact I have. They—”
“You can stay. I might have questions. Reo, let me tell you about this guard on Omega.”
Since they were, Eve started on the eggs while she summed up Cecil Rouche’s connection to Ricker.
19
IT WAS RIDICULOUS, BRIEFING A BUNCH OF women—mostly civilians at that—on murder. Women in pajamas, Eve thought as she ran it through for Reo. Women in pajamas eating French toast and nibbling on bacon.
Smart girls, okay. But still. Other than Peabody, Reo, and Mira, what did they know about cop work? She could stretch it for Nadine, she supposed. Working the crime beat gave Nadine some insight. And she could be trusted not to put a story ahead of ethics. That was something.
Maybe Louise wasn’t so far out of the box. As a doctor, she’d treated plenty of victims. As for
Mavis, she knew the streets, which didn’t really apply here. But she was basically serving coffee anyway.
What the hell.
“So, you want to make a deal with Rouche, give him incentive to flip on Max Ricker—and his New York contact who you believe killed both Coltraine and Sandy.”
“Yeah. If Rouche has the name.”
“If he has it,” Reo agreed. “And to pressure him to flip on Max Ricker as the orchestrator of the murders. Ricker, who’s already serving multiple life sentences in the toughest penal facility we have. We can’t do any more to him, in any real sense, but Rouche, an accessory before and after, possibly conspiracy to murder—he’d pay for it. If Callendar gets you what you hope, you’d have enough for that, and enough to push him to giving you the name of the actual killer—if he has it.”
“That’s not the point. If Ricker pushed the button, and he damned well did, he has to be held accountable.” Eve couldn’t—wouldn’t—budge on that single point. “Charged, tried, and convicted of these two murders. One of them a cop. Maybe a couple more life sentences added on doesn’t mean anything, practically. But they matter. It matters for Coltraine.”
“The law may not be able to make him pay, in any real sense, more than he already is.” Louise looked to the murder board, and Coltraine’s photo. “But if he isn’t held accountable, it’s not justice, is it? Two people are dead because he wanted them dead.”
“Justice also includes the families and those who loved the victims,” Mira added. “They’re entitled to it.”
Reo blew out a breath. “I don’t disagree, and I’ll have to pull all that out—and more—to convince my boss to take this metaphorical slap at Ricker, and let another fish off the line to do it. But he doesn’t walk on this, Dallas. Rouche and the tech, they don’t walk.”
“I don’t want them to. Accepting and exchanging bribes, tampering with security, falsifying documents, money laundering. We can pin his ex-wife, too, which adds more pressure. He’ll do cage time, but I’m betting Rouche will consider a stretch of ten a gift against life.”
“Charge him with conspiracy to commit,” Reo projected, “then deal it down. I’ll take it to my boss if you get what we need. But that deal’s going to depend on what Rouche brings to the table. Do you think he knows the name of the killer?”
“The actual identity, no. I figure he went through Sandy. But he may know enough to narrow the field. And he may know enough to help us plug up the funnel Ricker’s using to fund his operation. If he’s got one cop in his pocket still, he’s probably got more.”